Many of you know about my love for and affiliation with . It's a buy local movement run by local folks with local members. It's a fantastic idea with a great campaign behind it.
One of SyracuseFirst's primary campaigns is to get people to pledge a 10% shift from national to local. That is, if you go to Starbucks every workday (about 20 times a month), go to a local place 10% of the time – that means twice a month you're going across the street to Freedom of Espresso or downstairs to instead. If you eat at Applebees or Olive Garden, try something locally owned that's similarly priced with similar fare, like Pastabilities or the Dark Horse Tavern.
In the city of Syracuse, that would lead to a $10 million boost to the local economy, as locally owned businesses are more likely to buy supplies from other local shops, get their marketing materials printed locally, etc., whereas Starbucks and Olive Garden have national food distributors and get their materials printed from wherever corporate wants them to.
But a pledge doesn't do the local economy any good. You have to actually follow through on your pledge. That's the hard part.
I was followed recently on by a user called , which urged its followers to buy local – by, of course, signing a pledge.
Now here's the weird thing. is a national thing (you'll notice there's nothing denoting the site as having anything to do with Syracuse) started by a Burbank, California-based for-profit marketing agency called . You can get all sorts of "local" member benefits by becoming a sponsor and paying them a $95 sponsorship fee, or you can become an affiliate and earn money every time someone signs up as a sponsor through your link.
Somehow, that doesn't sound oh-so-local to me. How much of my $95 sponsorship goes to my community? I'm guessing none. That's not to say it's a bad investment, it just doesn't sound genuine to me. And would I love the affiliate money? Sure. But could I sell it in good conscience? No way. I feel much better giving SyracuseFirst $100 as a business or $30 as an individual, knowing that everything they do is here in the community.
